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Though he started campaigning a year and a half ago, it has become clear that he will soon have the opportunity he has been working towards when Premier Ralph Klein leaves later this year.

"Some time in September it is going to start ramping up pretty dramatically," Norris said.

"My goal for the next few months is to continue travelling around."

Having studied political science and owned his own business through the 1990's, Norris said he felt he was the best candidate to lead the party.

"It is important that the next government understands that business is driving the economy," he said, "and I think it is going to take a younger business person to get that message out."

"If you look on the stage of everyone who is there I am the only one there with that qualification."

"In my travels I really feel that we are at a generational shift in Alberta," he said.

"It is sort of like we graduated from being a smaller province to a national force. And I think the next leader has to represent that."

"It can't be about any particular city or any region, it has to be all of Alberta."

In keeping with his business model for the province Norris created Grassroots Leadership Group (GLG), a business that funds his run for leader.

"It is a public-policy think tank and people are investors in it. They buy shares."

"We are using the money to drive public policy and give me the ability to talk to people around the province of Alberta."

He said GLG raises money, has meetings and talks about ideas for the province.

Norris also said, with recent members from Edson joining GLG, there were 140 members of the group.

Those involved like the information and economic updates the company provides, and he said he hoped it would continue to run after the election.

The members like very much that they are part of the political process, he said. "It is very typical, they have done their thing. They have made some money. They love Alberta. They want to keep it strong and they see this as a vehicle to do it."

The top problems Norris said he looked to solve include the labour shortage, education and infrastructure.

"I am listening a lot to people and the number one question we ask is 'what is the biggest problem affecting you?' it always turns out to be labor -- always."

"It is not an issue anymore it is a crisis."

"The time for talking is done, I think we have to look at having our own immigration policy. I think we have to work with industry to go to places where there is high unemployment and bring folks to Alberta and start training them now."

"That is going to be one of our big priorities," he said.

"I don't think anyone has an idea of how big this problem is. When I was Minister of Economic Development we ranged between 32,000 - 40,000 jobs short on any given day in Alberta. That is mind-boggling when you think that in places like Newfoundland they have 15 per cent unemployment."

"I think we have to talk about the oil sands and the oil and gas industry in Alberta as a Canadian project. And start talking about the opportunity here."

Norris said the employment situation was further undermined by the education system in the province.

"We have some of the best post-secondary institutions here and all of them are turning away students."

"It is a two-fold problem of not having enough space and not having enough instructors."

He said it was caused by budget problems.

"We have to put the money into it but that is a longer term part of the fix," he said.

"It is probably five, six or ten years down the road before you start seeing the effects of that. Whereas immigration can be overnight."

He said that even when the education system was improved the province would still need workers and thus an increase in immigration numbers would not be a waste.

"I see them complimenting each other very well."

Norris also said that infrastructure would be high on the list.

"We are going to work a lot closer with municipalities."

Town representatives he has spoken with have told him they were limited in ways to raise funds, but still need to supply services like roads and sewers for their communities.

"We are booking billion dollar supluses every year and most cities are bankrupt and to me, that is just not right. We need to find a better way to split the tax dollar."

"We want to look at the next 10 to 20 years and how to get all these things caught up that were put on hold for the last 10 years."

But, he said, doing it all at once would be a wrong way to go about it.

"It increases inflation, it makes the government compete with the private sector for labor and supplies and it is not the way to do it."

Norris has also heard concerns about health care and corporate taxes.

He said he would like to put health care premiums on a graduated scale. Which means if you spend anything under $50,000 you would not pay premiums but anything over that would be on a gradual scale.

He said that B.C. and Ontario were competing for the country's lowest corporate taxes and he would like Alberta to have the lowest in Canada.

"We made a promise year ago to be the lowest in Canada," he said.

"That puts more money in their pockets and they can hire more people and so on."

Alberta has been branded red-necked, a bit footloose, and as gunslingers, he said.

"They just think of us as the rich cousins in Alberta, but we are not."

"I think we are remarkably faith-based. We have strong roots to our communities and I think that Albertans are far more family-orientated than people give them credit."